Abstract

Based on a design rational for constructivist pre-service teacher training on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), in this paper the authors consider teachers as designers of innovative digital educational content. Under this lens, the selection of appropriate technologies is considered as a threefold process that concerns the availability of technological tools for implementing a virtual classroom that facilitates communication, collaboration, and administration, the enabling technologies for serving specific learning purposes, and the technologies or tools that support trainees to design effective TEL-based courses. A number of questions emerge as the authors are looking for the most appropriate technologies for cultivating certain competences related to class operation, learning design and student engagement in a constructive manner. As a first step, in this paper, they investigate how trainees combine particular technologies with pedagogical tools to cultivate specific competences i.e. certain types of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Lastly, factors that trainees perceive as influential when adopting TEL tools in practice are revealed by their study.

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2. Technological Knowledge In Teacher Training

The selection of appropriate technologies for a teacher training course looks like a problem-solving task. In this context, technology is perceived as a three-dimensional scheme: it provides trainees the means for designing a course that exploits TEL, the means for implementing a virtual classroom enabling communication, collaboration, and administration processes, and the enabling technology applications for serving particular learning purposes.